Inside the landfill: Mountains of garbage

The Johnson County landfill, covering nearly 1,000 acres in the center of Shawnee, absorbs more than 5,000 tons of garbage a day from more than a dozen surrounding counties. All day, trucks drive into the active area to dump loads of waste while a corps of massive earth-movers levels and buries the garbage as it comes in. Once the active cell pictured here reaches capacity, operations will continue at a new cell that has been constructed in accordance with government regulations.